Björn Nordle

Agile development has been the direction I have taken since I picked up the first book on C# after getting hired by, then Sikroma and Cad-Q, now Symetri. Starting with myself, expanding the way of work into a small team, getting customers to understand this way of work, but also the entire company. Implementing Agile always presents new challenges every time you meet an obstacle or just a new person. Agile is the core of what I do - all day. Coming from development/delivery side, in my early days, and the education in mathematics and physics gives me good foundation and understanding of why things are and how to change them. My first role as Application Engineer at CAD-Q(Sikroma) was very diverse. Starting out by helping mostly local customers, some small, some larger. I did everything from managing server-rooms for one of the larger grocery companies in Sweden, serviced an x-ray machine for the animal hospital. My main focus was Product Document Management(PDM) though. Installing, setting up, trainings for staff, but most importantly, programming the addins and tweaks that made those systems fly. Controlling the life cycle is complex and important and so is connecting the data that the engineers create, so that carpenters build the house right, or the water plant has the latest spare parts. I've made system interfaces with text files, SOAP and rest. Managed data in SQL, Ms Access and (right..) text files. Companies always have a combination of old and new, archaic and modern. That goes for technology as well as culture, I guess. Small or big makes no difference. Sometimes the smallest use simple ways, sometimes the large ones are locked in ancient routines, too complex to change. Sometime the smallest are cutting edge, sometimes it's the big ones, trying to make a change. Sometimes it's a combination of all above, all mangled up. The Product Owner role sometimes don't seem that far from how I started out. Instead of solving one well defined problem per customer, I need to take a step back, figure out the problem. The actual problem. Before starting on the solution. Also, it takes a whole lot more people to solve a system wide implementation. Because if a lot of people will end up using your product, you better make sure they _can_ use it. Or they won't.